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While sensor jammers could leave a starship invisible to sensors, cloaking devices generated cloaking fields that completely absorbed all incoming sensor scans while shielding the host ship's emissions and reflected energy, thus rendering the starship invisible to both sensors and the naked eye. A single cloaking device unit towered over the average Human with a balloon-shaped computer core standing over a series of cloaking field antennas. Below lay the power cells, which were connected to the cloaking field matrix by a series of wires.

The only sensor capable of sensing a "cloaked" vessel was the expensive and rare Crystal gravfield trap, which tracked the gravitational fluctuations created by a large mass in space. Thus, any cloaked vessel was unable to hide from the CGT. However, such cloaking shields also came at a disadvantage to their users because they drained a large amount of energy from the starship's power plant, and (though dependent on the size of the device) a single unit cost millions of credits.

The hibridium model cloaking device's worst drawback was perhaps the "double-blind" nature of the cloaking shield, which also blocked the host ship's scanners and communication systems. Crews and passengers on cloaked ships were unable to peer beyond the cloak's shroud. Since visual navigation was impossible, any other form of navigation could only be exercised by preprogramming astrogation routes. The vessel was thus effectively isolated from the rest of the galaxy. Communications, combat operations, and sensor sweeps could only occur when the cloaking field was lowered or disabled. The cloaking device did nothing to impair senses dependent on the Force, however, and trained Force users could detect even cloaked ships in battle with ease.

Another drawback common to both was that a cloaked ship could be tracked was by the ship's magnetic signature. This tactic, used mostly by SeparatistcommanderAdmiralTrench, allowed tracking torpedoes to be fired and follow the ship even if it was cloaked.

Cloaking devices were once fairly common, based on stygium crystals mined on the planetAeten II in the Dreighton Nebula. However, as the crystal supply dwindled, cloaking devices followed suit, until there were none left at all.

Grand AdmiralMartio Batch managed to create a cloak based on hibridium obtained from Garos IV, but it was inefficient and suffered from double blindness—occupants of a starship using one could no more see the rest of the galaxy than the rest of the galaxy could see them. This double blindness limited its military effectiveness.

Batch sent the Tarkin to Aeten II, where it blew up the planet, exposing thousands of previously unreachable stygium crystals for Batch to use. He recreated the old stygium technology and applied it to the Phantom TIE project, but Rebel saboteurs completely destroyed the project, including an Executor-class Star Dreadnought equipped with a stygium cloaking device that housed the project, the Terror, and Batch was forced to flee.

Palpatine also commissioned a second team to work on the Vorknkx Project, aiming to make improvements to the hibridium cloak under the supervision of Grand Admiral Zaarin. After Zaarin attempted to overthrow the Emperor, control of the Vorknkx Project passed to Grand Admiral Thrawn. The team successfully equipped the CR90 corvetteVorknkx with a hibridium cloak but were unable to overcome a problem which made the device unstable when entering hyperspace.

Knowing that Zaarin was obsessed with obtaining the best technology, Thrawn allowed him to capture the Vorknkx, which was destroyed when Zaarin attempted to flee into hyperspace while cloaked.

The original hibridium cloak prototype found its way to the Emperor's storehouse on Wayland, where it remained hidden until the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Thrawn used the technology in a number of creative ways, including hiding a shipload of TIE/LN starfighters and mole miners as "empty cargo" in the Battle of Sluis Van; using cloaked asteroids as a unique siege engine at Coruscant; and carefully lining up ships above and below a planetary shield (with the ones beneath the shield cloaked) so fire from the orbiting ships would appear to pass right through the shield. This tactic led to the conquest and occupation of several New Republic member worlds including Sluis Van and Ukio without the heavy damage to lives, industry, and resources sustained during most conventional planetary invasions.

After Thrawn's death, innovation in finding a use for the device focused on the Computerized Combat Predictor. Ten years later, the Predictor still performed insufficiently to warrant further hope.

However, the cloneGrodin Tierce, who had been created with some of Thrawn's own thought processes, found a new use for the cloaking device, hiding three Star Destroyers in the outskirts of the Bothawui system, guiding them in by use of a comet that barely grazed the cloaking field.

In Star Wars: Battlefront II, the Bothan Spies for the Rebels have an ability called Stealth. This is a one way cloaking shield. The one way part may be due to game mechanics. The Knights of the Old Republic games also featured stealth-generating belts rendering the user invisible.